Category: Interviews

One Track Mind: Laryssa Kim

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date March 21, 2024

The Italian-Congolese artist on the overwhelming melancholy of Silver Mt. Zion’s best-known work

The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!

Laryssa Kim is an Italo-Congolese singer and composer based in Brussels whose latest album Contezza came out last month. Merging the experimental spirit of Acousmatics with soulful global influences, Kim’s music invites listeners into a dreamlike state, blending ghostly vocal fragments with electrifying riffs and natural sounds.

Contezza, meaning consciousness in ancient Italian, reflects Kim’s inner voyage during the solitude of the 2020 pandemic. Influenced by meditation, esotericism, and a diverse array of cultural artifacts, Kim explores themes of love, introspection, and the complexity of human emotion. The album serves as a magical ritual, an exorcism of beauty against personal demons. With influences ranging from Brian Eno to Erykah Badu, Contezza is a testament to Kim’s innovative approach to music and her profound engagement with the world’s infinite details.

For her One Track Mind selection, Laryssa has highlighted a deeply melancholy song, discovered during a period of mourning after losing a friend.

Tags interview, laryssa kim, one track mind

Interviews Music

Interview: DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date November 16, 2023

“Music is such an abstract listening form, your mind needs to fill in gaps“

“Sabrina Spellman was mixing dope beats in the other realm, which she recorded onto her inherited heirloom tape machine, made with her carboot-sale drum machines and charity-shop synthesizers” So runs the legend and origin story of DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ, the anonymous producer with a penchant for warping 90s samples into nostalgia-rich, tearjerking electronic music.

Several albums, hundreds of tracks and a 1975 collaboration later, her latest LP Destiny arrived earlier this year in all its 4 hour + running time glory. One of the most innovative and original electronic artists to emerge in the last few years, I was very pleased to welcome her to TPW for a chat…

To start off I’d like to ask something I hope you don’t take the wrong way – what on earth possessed you to release a four hour album?

Well, I wanted to beat Charmed’s length cause everyone prefers the longer albums (they’re more popular among listeners) compared to the shorter albums (they’re less popular among listeners) and I wanted to find a way to supplant Charmed as it was still very popular even after three albums released since lol! I also had a lot of songs finished and they all worked too well for me to cut them (I think I only cut two songs eventually from the album).

Tags album, destiny, dj sabrina the teenage dj, electronic, house, interview

Interviews Music

Interview: Nina Kinert

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date November 9, 2023

“These days I feel somewhat in control of what I choose to believe”

Nina Kinert released the album Romantic and the EP In Twos in 2018 and was awarded Composer of the year at the Independent Manifest gala in Sweden that same year. Her new album Religious – her first release since 2021’s Wild, Wild Geese – tells personal stories about growing up within the Pentecostal Church Community in Sweden, while simultaneously exploring her attraction to both nature and the supernatural.

Romantic was my album of the year in 2018, and still affects how I search for new music today. I’m pretty much always on the lookout for ‘the next Nina’; to discover an artist about whom I was previously unaware, but that goes on to have a huge significance in my life. So to say I was happy that she agreed to an interview is somewhat of an understatement.

Religious tells stories about you growing up in the Pentecostal Church, and also explores your attraction to spiritual mystique and the supernatural. Were these attractions you felt as a child, or did they come later?

I’ve always felt open to different possibilities, and maybe seen that as a result of my childhood within the church. As if it gave me an understanding of belief – no matter what the belief relies on. But when I was a child I thought everything needed to be categorised, divided into good or evil. That’s not how I see it now.

Tags album, chamber pop, electronic, folk, interview, nina kinert, religious, romantic

Interviews Music

One Track Mind: Freak Heat Waves

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date August 24, 2023

The Canadian duo’s Steve Lind on the inspirational merits of an r&b icon

For more than a decade, Freak Heat Waves have been steadily amassing a cult following and earning acclaim from both critics and underground aficionados alike. Their music is a heady cocktail that defies easy categorization, blending elements of post-punk, psych, dub, ambient, house, and techno. Their eclectic sound has served as the soundtrack to countless DIY punk shows, outsider galleries and sleazy discos, establishing the duo as iconoclasts with a reputation for ignoring expectations and subverting genre conventions.

Their latest album Mondo Tempo exists in a hazy space between all these genres. Lead by Lind’s purringly nonchalant vocals, all the tracks on Mondo Tempo are various shades of “extremely chill”. From the barely-there, Nightmares on Wax-evoking Altered States to the spacious, breezy melodies of Cindy collab In a Moment Divine it’s one to be savoured, preferably while poolside somewhere exotic.

For their One Track Mind selection, Freak Heat Waves Steve Lind has dived back into the movie vaults to the soundtrack of a nearly 80 year old noir classic.

Tags alt pop, dub, freak heat waves, interview, mondo tempo, one track mind, r&b

Interviews Music

One Track Mind: Avi C. Engel

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date August 15, 2023

The Toronto-based artist on the spellbinding power of a 70-year-old composition.

Formerly known as Clara Engel, Avi C. Engel is a prolific and multi-faceted Toronto-based artist whose music has been described as “folk noir,” and “minimalist holy blues from another galaxy.” Their influences span genres and media, amongst them Vasko Popa, Virginia Woolf, Theodore Roethke, Jim Jarmusch, Arvo Part, Robert Johnson, Gillian Welch, and Jacques Brel. In their own words, “I’m not writing the same song over and over so much as writing one long continuous song that will end when I die”, which is about as beautifully bleak a statement as I can imagine.

Their latest album Sanguinaria marries equally poetic lyrics with sparse instrumentation, building atmospheres that move beyond ‘haunting’ into territory that is almost unbearably raw and unsettling, but with a lightness of touch and attention to detail that draws you in completely.

For their One Track Mind selection, Avi has dived back into the movie vaults to the soundtrack of a nearly 80 year old noir classic.

Tags avante-pop, avi c engel, folk, interview, noir, one track mind, sanguinaria, walter shuman

Interviews Music

Interview: 36

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date August 1, 2023

“Cold Ecstasy is the ultimate memory rush. It’s the album I’ve always wanted to make“

Cold Ecstasy is the latest album from 36 – the ambient and experimental electronic music project of UK artist Dennis Huddleston. An homage to the happier, more emotionally-charged aspects of the UK hardcore and rave scene, it is a truly beautiful body of work, playing with themes of memory and deeply rooted in nostalgia: something with which I have an arguably unhealthily obsession.

I love Cold Ecstasy, so was delighted that Dennis agreed to answer some questions about his inspirations and approaches to its creation.

For the majority of the 00s and 2010s – and arguably even in its 90s heyday – trance and the happier aspects of hardcore were pretty much written off as unserious and not worthy of respect. Why do you think that is?

People are too serious, perhaps? Look, I get it. There were some absolutely dreadful happy hardcore tunes. Things got pretty stupid after 1997. But UK hardcore has always had this duality, right from the get-go. For every classic tune like Ellis Dee’s “Free The Feeling” we also got gimmicky trash like “Sesame’s Treet”. Happy hardcore just took things to the extreme, since the bad stuff was really, really bad. It was an easy target, I found it hilarious how Sharkey was a key part of hardcore’s downfall with much-maligned tunes like “Toytown”, yet he was also instrumental in pushing the Freeform sound years later, which gave us so many great tracks. As I say, such is the duality of man!

Of course, it’s a phenomenon which isn’t exclusive to hardcore. Every genre has good and bad tunes. It encourages you to dig deeper to find the stuff that shines brightest. Believe me, there’s plenty of classic happy hardcore tracks, if you give it a chance. I wouldn’t have listened if they weren’t there.

Tags 36, album, ambient, cold ecstasy, hardcore, interview

Interviews Music

One Track Mind: Cloth

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date June 15, 2023

The Glasgow-based band’s Paul Swinton on discovering a track that sparked a life-long obsession

Cloth are a Glasgow two-piece comprising twins Rachael and Paul Swinton, who combine alt-rock with electronically enhanced production with extremely enjoyable results.

While their self-titled debut album was shortlisted for the 2020 SAY Award and enjoyed committed support from various 6 Music DJs, their second album Secret Measure – released in May on Mogwai’s Rock Action Records – seems to already be breaking through in a more significant fashion. Presenting a wider, more cinematic sound and arguably more emotionally resonant than their debut, it’s been reviewed very positively pretty much across the board, and quite rightly so.

For their One Track Mind selection, Paul Swinton talks about the lasting impact of a charity shop find.

Tags cloth, i love this life, interview, one track mind, secret measure, the blue nile

Interviews Music

One Track Mind: Spencer Doran

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date June 7, 2023

Spencer Doran takes us back in time with his appreciation of an “outsider’ Renaissance composer

Described by Bandcamp Daily as “Video Game Music’s Most Valuable Outsider”, Spencer Doran is a composer, producer and contemporary sound designer who makes up one half of the Portland duo and Italian minimalism enthusiasts Visible Cloaks.

Composed and produced over the course of nearly three years, his latest solo album is the original soundtrack for SEASON: A letter to the future, which underpins the highly-anticipated meditative exploration game in which the main character must save memories of a civilization on the verge of collapse. A lush collection of transmissions from this warmly fading world, we hear a culture and ecology through the sentimental ear of their last witness.

For his One Track Mind selection, Spencer has picked an entire album from Tobias Hume, focussing on a particular performance from Jordi Savall.

Tags ambient, electronic, interview, one track mind, season, soundtrack, spencer doran

Interviews Music

One Track Mind: This Is The Kit

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date May 3, 2023

Kate Stables on the prismic, reflective qualities of a Paul Simon classic

This Is The Kit is the alias of English musician Kate Stables. Established in 2003, she released her first album Krülle Bol in 2008 and has over four subsequent albums – the latest of which was 2020’s Off Off On for Rough Trade – established a sound deeply rooted in the folk traditions of storytelling, with songs evoking an earthy, tactile sense of time and place one moment and ethereal, dream-like atmospheres the next.

Recently she announced her new album, Careful of your Keepers, due for release 09 June along with the lead single Inside Outside which you can listen to below.

For her One Track Mind selection, Kate has penned some typically poetic words about a favourite track from Paul Simon’s seminal album Graceland.

Tags folk, inside outside, interview, kate stables, one track mind, paul simon, the boy in the bubble, this is the kit

Interviews Music

One Track Mind: Julia Gjertsen

Post author By The Predatory Wasp
Post date April 27, 2023

The Oslo-based pianist and composer on the cinematic journey and structural chaos of Fieldhead

Julia Gjertsen is a pianist and composer based in Oslo. Combining contemporary electronic elements with the piano, she creates contemplative soundscapes and introspective compositions that draw inspiration from nature and reflect on moments from the past and present. Her music is characterized by a tender playing style and beautifully crafted melodies that aim to convey nuanced perceptions and emotions that can often be challenging to express through words.

Her second album Formations was released last year, while more recently she released the collaborative EP Dive alongside Finnish composer Juha Mäki-Patola. Her latest single, Embers, came out earlier this month as part of Fractals, Moderna Records’ annual piano day compilation featuring twelve pieces from composers and pianists around the world.

For her One Track Mind selection, Julia has selected the opening track from UK electronic duo Fieldhead’s 2009 album they shook hands for hours.

Tags ambient, classical, fieldhead, interview, julia gjertsen, one track mind, this train is a rainbow